h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>The expulsion of the Celts from Exeter by Athelstan was not an ethnic cleansing of the Cornish at all. They were Devonian Celts and we know they left the city walls but moved only about two kilometres. The fact that the Celt's later returned within the walls is supported by the region "Bretayne" within the old walled city which survived (in name) until the 18th century.<

Ozzie Exile,

Although I'm sure you're better informed on these issues than I am, I could make the suggestion that those expelled were perhaps only those who would have been capable of organising rebellion or co-operation with the Vikings. In other words only members of the aristocracy, and even if they eventually moved back, perhaps there were Celts in there all along.

Feel free to correct me though

Einion,

The historian Michael Wood came to a similar conclusion concerning which particular Britons were expelled from Exeter by Athelstan. However, his interpretation was that it was only the dissenting Britons who were evicted. As it is known that the Celtic Church had a number of doctrines, which the Roman Church (and therefore Athelstan) would have regarded as heretical, it would make sense if he decided that he would no longer tolerate their presence in the city, and evicted the heretics/dissenters. Maybe this also explains why he decided to split the large diocese (covering Devon and Cornwall) into two, and made the Tamar the boundary between the two new diocese.

There is no evidence of any alliance between the Cornish and the Vikings occurring since the Battle of Hingston Down, so I am not sure that this possibility was what was concerning Athelstan.

In his study "The Celt and the Teuton in Exeter" Thomas Kerslake (1873) identified (from church dedications) that the Celts occupied a segment within the old walled city from its centre northward including the north gate in its entirety.

This work suggests that the security of the city may have been a concern for Athelstan as any walled city is only as strong as its weakest point, and if distrust did exist between the two peoples then this would have provided ample motivation.

On the other hand Kerslake was able to carry out his work because Celtic churches were typically dedicated to different (ie Celtic) saints. This also supports the idea of a religious boundary.

However if the Celts had been expelled for their religious views or in their entirety because of their race it might have been expected that the churches would have been rededicated - which they were not - which might suggest that not all the Celts suddenly left the city.

I agree with Michael Wood’s idea, mentioned by Plymouth Exile, that the early English established church probably played the biggest role in this episode of Devon’s history.

The British expulsion of 927 was followed a year later by the construction, by Athelstan, of a new monastery dedicated to St Peter and St Mary. This monastery eventually became the St Peter’s cathedral that stands today. The surviving Celtic church and its native adherents in Exeter were probably seen as an obstacle to Athelstan’s and, more importantly, the church’s ambitious new monastery.

At about the same time, lands at Branscombe, mentioned in Alfred’s will some 20 years before as ‘Wealcynn’ land were transferred to the ownership of this monastery.

Rather than ‘ethnic cleansing’ these may have been the actions of an emergent and greedy early medieval church exploiting its dominant role in society, and moral leverage over the Saxon state, to seize as much land as was possible in a peripheral and economically vulnerable region.

It is strange, to me, that Athelstan decided to take action against the Celtic Devonians at this point, on purely ethnic grounds, when for centuries the two ethnic groups had appeared to have co-existed quite peacefully.

“According to William of Malmesbury, the monk historian (born 1090), the Britons and Saxons lived side by side in Exeter until the tenth century. St Petroc's was the British church and St Sidwell's the Saxon.”

http://www.crediton.co.uk/tourism/boniface_crediton.html

What brought about the sudden change in English attitudes towards Devon Britons in the 10th century? Rather than Saxon racism, it may have been the ambitions of the early medieval church, and its demands, in which native Britons were easy targets for mass expropriation.

What happened in 10th century Devon may have been an early example of what was later to occur against other religious and ethnic minorities in later medieval Europe.

An interesting conjecture is that this very early example of established church greed and intolerance may have got its revenge, following the Viking invasions.

The following info is taken from the Branscombe parish website, I cannot guarantee whether it is historical fact or not, but if true, what it describes is very interesting;

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1491/saxon.html

“About 70 years later [after the Wealcynn land was given to the monastery in Exeter], Branscombe was seized by marauding Vikings, who held it until 1056, during the reigns of the Danish kings Canute, Harold I and Harthacnut.

In 1056, Leofric, Bishop of Crediton, persuaded Edward the Confessor to allow him to transfer the bishop's "stool" to Exeter, which was more easily defended. The Benedictine monks of St.Peter were deported to Westminster and their churches, dwellings and revenues transferred to the bishop and his clergy. The parishes of Branscombe and Salcombe were recovered from the Danes. Church records don't say how this was achieved, or where the Danes went, only that they drove off all their cattle, rather than surrender them.”

It was claimed by John of Worcester that Leofric was himself British; he may have been a Briton with a Saxon name or of mixed parentage. If this was true, he may have been a British sympathiser and aware of Exeter’s former ecclesiastical role in Celtic times. His ‘deportation’ of the monks in Exeter—installed after the British expulsion—and the recovery of the Branscombe and Salcombe lands from the Danes may have been his way of addressing injustices to his own people that, even a century afterwards, were still a cause of deep resentment.

What I find most interesting is, regarding Leofric’s recovery of Branscombe and Salcombe from the Danes, “church records don’t say how this was achieved”.

exevalleyboy,

What I found interesting was the suggestion that for 60 years in the tenth/eleventh centuries this area of south east Devon was under Danish rule.

I presume when the Branscombe website talks about Salcombe they mean Salcombe Regis - which is some 4 or 5 miles distant from Branscombe. Assuming the site is accurate I wonder how large the 'Danish area of control' was.

I note that there are a number of references to 'Vikings' in the Sidmouth area (eg soccer clubs, judo clubs etc..)

As a follow up to the discussion last week about Pol Hodge's severe distortion of the truth in his WMN letter, here are links to two responses - one by me.

http://www.thisisdevon.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=141529&command=displayContent&sourceNode=141513&contentPK=11785070&moduleName=InternalSearch&keyword=pol%20hodge&formname=sidebarsearch

(In the on-line version it seems the WMN has duplicated the first para)

http://www.thisisdevon.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=141529&command=displayContent&sourceNode=141513&contentPK=11836287&moduleName=InternalSearch&keyword=celtic%20devon&formname=sidebarsearch

If the suggestion of co-operation caused Pol Hodge to be filled with rage, his response to these will be interesting!!

I came across the following website, which is an early twentieth century study of Village Life in the eighteenth/nineteenth centuries entitled "The Village Labourer", and which looks at the impact of enclosures.

Enclosures were responsible for the change from large open and common fields (common to most of England in the middle ages) to the form of enclosures or fields that exist today and which occurred in the late eighteenth century.

This change caused significant disruption across most of England as the article highlights.

However the article suggests that this disruption did not occur in Devon and Cornwall as noted below.

"3. This was the general structure of the village that was dissolved in the eighteenth century. It is distinguished from the Keltic type of communal agriculture, know as run-rig, in two important respects. In the run-rig village the soil is periodically redivided, and the tenant's holding is compact. Dr. Slater (Geographical Journal, Jan. 1907) has shown that in those parts of England where the Keltic type predominated, e.g., in Devon and Cornwall, enclosure took place early, and he argues with good reason that it was easier to enclose by voluntary agreement where the holdings were compact than it was where they were scattered in strips. But gradual enclosure by voluntary agreement had a different effect from the cataclysm-like enclosure of the eighteenth century, as is evident from the large number of small farmers in Devonshire"

This suggests that the traditional form of farming which saved Devon and Cornish farmers from the "cataclysm" of elsewhere is a legacy of Devon and Cornwall's Celtic (or Keltic!) past. This is further evidence of a continuity of Celtic peoples and a Celtic culture and way of life in Devon.

http://melbecon.unimelb.edu.au/het/hammond/village.html

This is not to say that the enclosures did not have an impact in Devon. In Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould's "Book of Dartmoor" he blames the gradual expansion of enclosures at the moor's margins for a diminution of Dartmoor's size.

Ozzie Exile,

Your discovery on this website is very interesting, and it immediately reminded me of something called the ‘Celtic field system’ I remembered hearing a long time ago in connection to agriculture in Devon.

I searched the subject and found the following, it supports what JL and Barbara Hammond said in their 1911/1920 study.

It is taken from a book called “Dry Stone Walling”, written 1977 by Alan Brooks and Sean Adcock. As part of the subject, they deal with how field boundaries evolved.

“Meanwhile in the ‘Celtic fringe’, the older infield-outfield system persisted, even where the earlier settlements were abandoned. In the granite areas of Cornwall and Devon, in parts of Wales and Scotland, and through much of Ireland, the story is one of continued nibbling away at the open land. Tiny garden-like plots fenced by massive clearance walls surrounded each farmstead, but these islands of cultivation remained virtually swamped in the vast expanse of open moor.”

http://handbooks.btcv.org.uk/handbooks/content/section/1580

Here the authors seem quite happy to include Devon in the ‘Celtic fringe’ along with Cornwall, Wales and Scotland. This is a purely practical observation, based on the fact the field system in Devon is the same as in other Celtic regions.

I also wanted to post this. On the BBC Somerset website, as part of the ‘Voices’ feature, Roger Evans says;

“Hence in eastern and central Somerset the dialect is practically Anglo-Saxon. To the west of the Parrett, especially around the Brendon Hills and Exmoor, the dialect is spoken with a Celtic accent and closely resembles that of Devon.

Many Celtic words survive such as bastick (basket), woh (a command for a horse to stop), fagot (bundle of wood) and mattock (a cutting tool).”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/somerset/content/articles/2005/01/18/dont_tell_i_tell_ee_feature.shtml

It would be very interesting to know more about Celtic influence on the Devon and west Somerset accents and vocabulary. If this influence exists, it is good evidence of a living Celtic cultural survival in these parts; that the dialects actually evolved out of the old Brythonic language and that elements of it survive in present day speech.

You may be aware of the webbased dictionary Wikipedia.

There has been a brief entry on Westcountry Brythonic for some months.

This posting has been nominated for deletion because one contributor thought it 'patent nonsense'.

The language is not patent nonsense as it fits into most 'celtic family trees' (see link http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~marisal/ie/celtic.html), but according to these self inflated personas it does not credit a mention because they didn't know about it.

I think the underlying issue is that they don't believe Joseph Biddulph's reconstruction is sufficiently academic and its exact structure subject to some doubt. However that is not the point as the article made this quite clear.

The process to consider a deletion is to hold a vote - which seems to be some sort of kangaroo court. Anyone interested in opposing this deletion can do so by registering on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westcountry_Brythonic

(you will need to register - a simple process via an icon in the top right hand corner)

here is where you register your vote.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Westcountry_Brythonic

to make an entry just hit the edit tab for this page and use the other entries as a guide.

I tried to place a vote to keep the page, but it timed out on me, repeatedly. I think the page needs to be edited to reflect the concerns of those unconvinced by Biddulph's thesis, but I don't think it should be deleted altogether, since the idea that Cornish and Breton evolved from a common ancestor seems uncontroversial, and besides, many modern languages have been revived after dying out, including Cornish and (I think) Welsh.

After all the error messages, etc. I managed to post the following in support of the article’s retention.

“I agree with the previous posting by Nick. The West Country Brythonic language is hypothetical and this needs to be emphasised. I think it is quite reasonable to propose that before the (later) arrival of English in Cornwall, Devon and west Somerset, there was a common speech in that region that was probably very much like Cornish, and from which Cornish and Breton originated.”

However, I feel that although West Country Brythonic deserves further investigation, it is certainly a dead language, and could never be plausibly revived. Welsh, although declined by the mid-20th century was still being spoken when it underwent revival, whereas Cornish had not been spoken for nearly 200 years ago when it was revived. The problems with reviving Cornish show that is hard to re-establish a language which is not actually being spoken. Similar problems in reviving the native language have been encountered in Scotland and Ireland outside the Gaelic speaking areas.

Nevertheless, I am very much in favour of Cornish being taught. The loss of the GCSE in Cornish was very sad. With it, there was the chance of promoting interest in a revival that was mainstream and not confined to specialist groups. Given that Cornish was spoken in Cornwall until the late 18th century, and that there are claims that it was still being spoken in Devon until the 16th century, I think learning the Cornish language in its revived and reconstructed form is the best option for those sympathetic to a revival of Celtic language in the west.

OzzieExile,

Actually the reason given for deletion is not that the article is "patent nonsense", but that "The nominator asserts that the information in this article is unverifiable".

I have pointed out that all of the information contained in the article is verifiable. The nominator (an American 'know it all' who became an Irish citizen and seems to be one of the 'big noises' in the Celtic Congress) started off by claiming that West Country Brythonic didn't exist because he had never heard of it. When he was advised about the Celtic language trees proposed by McCone and Schmidt, which included SW Brittonic, he then changed his line of attack to the assertion that the language was 'unattested', because there was no remaining textual evidence. When it was pointed out that there was ample writen evidence in the form of 'attested' Brythonic place-names in the South West (Coates and Breeze), he changed his objection again to the assertion that such a language was (in his inflated opinion) not sufficiently important to merit inclusion.

Does anyone know what the lag time is for this vote (ie when is the decision made to either delete or retain the article)? I looked for it on the discussion page, but couldn't see it, even though Wikipedia policy is to have specific deadlines for these votes.

Finally found the answer to my own question - it's five days.

Plymouth Exile

The nominator started with a claim that it was "patent nonsense", but has now revised his claim to "unverifiable".

If you look at Evertype's own page on Wikipedia you will quickly realise what kind of guy he is. Knowingly in breach of Wikipedia's own rules he eulogises himself, links to his own website, and (amongst other languages) links to "Tolkein languages".

I think Iknow where the patent nonsense is. About 2 ffeet from his keyboard!

Hi all

Thought I might pop back and try and catch up. I agree with ExeValleyBoy that if a Celtic language is to be reborn over the peninsular it will have to be Cornish. Westcountry Brythonic is probably too dead! There has (so far) been only one successful rebirth of a language and that is modern Hebrew, but it's sucess is that it was alien to virtually all the communities that emigrated to Palestine/Israel over the last century and a bit and so became a lingua franca. That the language (westcountry brythonic) existed can be attested by the closeness of Breton and Cornish, which are vitrually mutually comprehensible, even if there is little written evidence.

Welsh has been uniquely sucessful however for a number or reasons.Even in English speaking south Wales there was a lot of pride in Welsh as a symbol of the nation. And of course there is S4C. S4C broadcasts some good quality programming in Welsh, as does BBC Radio Cymru. In Scotland, Gaelic programming is shared by BBC Scotland (TV and Radio nan Gaedhail, and the SMG ITV companies) Some of it is good, some of it is dire, and a frightening amount of it is dubbed cartoons. In the modern world, if a language is to survive and flourish, it needs its own TV frequencies AND GOOD PROGRAMMING. English speaking Wales watches Pobol Y Cwm, the BBCs oldest soap, because it is Welsh and therefore relevant, not because it is in Welsh. And S4C make/commision some fantastic animation. Ireland has introduced TG4 as an equivalent for Irish, and some of the first things the new administrations in Spain after the fall of Franco introduced were Catalan, Galician, Basque and Valencian language TV and radio. The Bretons and other linguistic minorities are envious of Sianel Pedwar Cymru, but S4C can be seen as one of the driving forces which has lifted in ten years the percentage of Welsh speakers in Wales from 19 to 21%.

In Scotland there are still massive arguments over bi-lingualising the road signs, even in the Gaeltachd. Arguements over a dedicated Gaelic TV channel across the country. Very little is in Gaelic. But bi-ligual roadsigns, forms, ATM machines are the norm across Wales, and it is that which has turned Welsh around, makeing it official and makinging it compulsory first on the part of public bodies and then across the country. Oh, and the Isle of Man is pumping millions in resurrecting Manx as a living language. It can be done, given the political will. But for Devon it entails persuading a large percentage of Devonians to accept Cornish as a badge of identity. Now that will take time. But some good news, Welsh and Gaelic will join English on all new United Kingdom passports.

On a different note, just got my Devon flag, now to find somewhere for it to fly...

Tivvyboy

Good to here that you now have a Devon Flag!!

For the rest of you (and with reference to the previous discussion about Wikipedia) here is an article briefly detailing the history of Celtic Languages.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/timelines/wales/celtic.shtml

The article notes "South-western Brythonic" as a distinct form of the language - and parent to both Cornish and Breton.

Although the Celtic language only died out in Devon as late as the reign of the Plantagenets (ie 14th Century or so), whether or not the language was essentially the same as the equivalent Cornish of the era, it would have derived from this same ancestor.

By the way Nick - thanks for your support on the Wikipedia forum.

S'OK, I may have had my disagreements with some of the folks on here, but I think you're in the right on this one. Besides, enlightened self-interest dictates that I should oppose a vote based on lack of "notability". If they decide that Westcountry Brythonic is "not notable", then what's to stop them deleting their entry for Wessex Society on the same pretext. I find it ironic that the person proposing the vote for deletion has his own autobiography page on Wikipedia, despite not exactly being a household name.

England can justifiably claim, as much as Wales, that its original language and culture was destroyed, or corrupted.

“Caxton referred to some ‘gentlemen’ who had complained that his translations contained words which ‘coude not be vnderstande of comyn peple, and desired me to vse olde and homely termes in my translacyons’ [could not be understood by the common people, and they wished me to use old and homely terms in my translations]. But this could go too far; the English language changed and the old and homely terms of past times were now incomprehensible. Caxton had seen old texts written in an English which he could not himself understand. He had even noticed a change in the English language from his youth to his old age: ‘And certaynly our langage now vsed varyeth ferre from that whiche was vsed and spoken whan I was borne’ [and certainly the language now used is very different from that which was used and spoken when I was born].”

http://www.bl.uk/treasures/caxton/english.html

In the 15th century English in England was in the same position as Welsh and Cornish in later times. Since the Norman Conquest it had become a language of the poor and the excluded. It can be argued that Old English, in its pure form, had became extinct by the late 12th century.

The only reason we know real Old English existed is because of the survival of texts written in the language. Most of the surviving Old English is in the Wessex form of the language, even this is incomprehensible to the modern English speaker.

Old English, unlike Welsh, is an extinct language, but one that, like Cornish, survives in old texts. If English people wanted to reassert their ‘old’ identity, they have a language ready to speak, with a better preserved system of grammar, and much greater body of literature, than is the case with Cornish. English nationalists could argue that England’s real identity was destroyed by the Norman invasion, and this imposed an alien language and culture on their country, and that the original English language—which survives in so many texts—is the real language of England as opposed to the Latin-French patois which some might say masquerades as today’s ‘English’ language.

English nationalists could argue for bi-lingual road signs and official documents in Old English. Old English is a proper language in its own right that requires no reconstruction. Its grammatical rules are well understood, and conform entirely to other Germanic languages. It died out, in the late 12th century, as it was corrupted into a dialect called ‘Middle English’ which could be said was not real English at all.

In Devon, where the English and the Celtic mixed together over the centuries, the most likely conclusion is that the Devon dialect represents the best expression of Celtic heritage, albeit English in origin, and mixed with later influences like Norman French. A similar English dialect exists in Cornwall, distinct from the Cornish language which persisted in the far west of the county. The Cornish English dialect and accent is seen to be influenced by the Cornish language, whereas the similar Devon English dialect and accent is presumed to be of completely Anglo-Saxon origin.

Identical or similar Cornish and Devon place names are assigned completely different origins only on the basis that most Cornish names are assumed to be Celtic in origin and all Devon place names are still assumed to come from Old English.

Caxton’s observations above show how a language can die out quickly under the influence of a new political and economic force. It happened to the ‘real’ English that was spoken in the 11th century and which is now an extinct language.

The last Cornish speakers in the 18th century can be compared to the Gaeltacht areas of western Ireland. As in Ireland and Scotland, most of Cornwall and Devon was speaking a dialect of English with a distinct accent. Had Cornwall and Devon not been part of England, their shared culture would not be in question. East Devon and Exeter would be the borders, and west Cornwall would be the West Country equivalent of the Gaeltacht.